Attorneys and real estate agents aren’t the only ones using their mobile devices for work. Recruiters are too, which means you need to have you resume mobile ready.
Sure it may not be a requirement for most jobs today, but anything that makes it’s easier for the hiring manager to see your resume is going to help. Not to mention mobile is the way the world is heading.
“A lot of people tend to use their phone to review new applicants,” says Jesse Siegal, senior managing director – temporary staffing at The Execu|Search Group. “Getting your resume mobile friendly is only going to help and give you little more of a competitive edge in a pretty tight market.”
Getting your resume mobile ready doesn’t mean a complete redo, but it does mean you want to make sure the layout and content keeps mobile readers engaged. From choosing the right font to making it easy to read, here’s how to get your resume ready for the mobile wave of job hunting.
1. Keep it simple
Unless you work in a creative field where your resume is an extension of your portfolio, the best way to ensure your resume can be read regardless of the device is to keep it simple. “Avoid anything that is overly complicated like columns,” says Pamela Skillings, co-founder of job coaching firm Skillful Communications. “No colors and no crazy formatting. It might get garbled.”
Since most people will be looking at their mobile screen vertically and scrolling down you also want to make sure it fits in the pane of the phone or mobile device, says Siegal. The font should also be something basic like Arial, he says, noting you can differentiate sections of the resume with a smaller font instead of bolding items. “You want to make it a little more compact and laid out and a little easier on the eye,” says Siegal.
2. Be concise and to the point
Recruiters and hiring managers are often operating under a tight deadline and don’t have time to read a resume that drones on and on. On a mobile phone, people typically have even less patience, which is why brevity is your best friend. “Minimize scrolling and cater to short attention spans by ensuring that you get your point across with the least amount of words possible,” says Jesse Wright, vice president of recruiting and delivery at Adecco Engineering and Technology. “Ideally, your resume should be able to be captured in a single screen shot.”
Experts says to include all of the information about your career, accomplishments and achievements that pertain to the job opportunity up top and leave the less important things at the bottom. When someone opens a resume on a mobile phone what they see first is “make or break it” for the job candidate, says Skillings. You want to make sure you are optimizing that piece of mobile real estate by having the most relevant and interesting information right at the top, she says. “The biggest thing is making sure you are grabbing them with what is immediately visible,” says Skillings.
3. Take advantage of hyperlinks
Standing out is pointless if you make it hard for the recruiter or hiring manager to contact you. An easy way to prevent that from happening is to have hyperlinks to your phone number and email. Ideally you want the recruiter to be able to call you directly from your resume, says Wright. If you use social media as part of your job search, then Wright says to provide hyperlinks to those as well. After all scores of people have the leading social media apps installed on their mobile devices and in one click can be checking you out on LinkedIn.
4. Test your mobile resume before sending it out
Anything can go wrong with technology, and the last thing you want to happen is a problem with your resume whether it’s reading it or opening up the attachment. That is why career experts says it’s extremely important to test your resume on as many mobile devices as you can including an iPhone, iPad, and Android based phones. Wright says it’s a good idea to use the latest version of Microsoft Office because some new smartphones and tablets don’t support legacy versions of Microsoft. Another option says Adecco’s Wright is to save your resume in the PDF format, which provides easy mobile viewing. “You don’t want to make assumptions,” adds Skilling. “Testing it is important.”
Source: Glassdoor Blog